The title of this post is one of my (many) favorite lines appearing in this Supreme Court oral argument transcript from yesterday's proceedings in Rosales-Mireles v. United States. The case addresses whether a (small) guideline error will usually satisfy the plain error standard for correction of an error raised only on appeal, and I highly recommend that sentencing fans read the entire transcript. There are too many amusing and interesting flourishes throughout the transcript to cover them all here, but this one little passage from early in the second part of the argument that provides a flavor of the overall direction of Justices' approach to this case:
JUSTICE KAGAN: Mr. Ellis [Assistant to the Solicitor General arguing for the prosecution], Justice Gorsuch, when he was a judge, wrote this opinion which I'm sure you've read many times, and I just want to quote one sentence from it and then ask you what you think about it because he basically, you know, suggests why you maybe lose.
This rev up to a question from Justice Kagan is only one of many part of the transcript that leads me to think basically, you know, the government is going to lose this case. Evan Lee in his SCOTUSblog preview of the Rosales-Mireles argument highlighted effectively why this case is sure to be an up hill climb for the government, and little in this transcript suggests otherwise.
I have not yet noted who spoke the line I have used in this title of this post, and I suppose at this point it would be fun to encourage readers to guess. I suspect hard-core Court watchers with sentencing affinity may readily be able to figure out who said this, but arguably any and every Justice (and any and every judges and any and every practitioner) sometimes feels that, post-Booker, the guidelines exist in some kind of "middle universe."
At the risk of making inappropriate suggestions, I do think the Justice who spoke this particular line might be able to engender a special kind of new fandom if in the future he were to suggest that the federal sentencing guidelines "exist in some kind of Middle Earth." With a single line, J.R.R. Tolkien fans might start showing up at US Sentencing Commission hearings as well as giving this Justice the kinds of adoration some colleagues get. And then my students will finally understand why I often walk around clutching the US Sentencing Guidelines Manual saying "My Precious."
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